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Google asks websites to kindly not break its shiny new targeted-advertising API
- scarface_74 3y agoSo tell me again why I would ever use a browser created by an adTech company?
- automatic6131 3y agoHere are your choices: Adtech company's browser the adtech reskin the browser company almost wholly funded by the adtech company OR Vendor and device restricted browser that won't work if you, say, wish to use Windows or Linux (incl android).
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd if I wouldn’t use a browser by an adTech company, why would I use a phone with an operating system built by the same adTech company?
- smoldesu 3y agoPerhaps because you forgot both are Open Source with privacy-respecting forks?
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd then you give up every app that uses Google Play Services.
- smoldesu 3y agohttps://youtu.be/bi7V_RoUW3k https://youtu.be/bi7V_RoUW3k
- scarface_74 3y agoIf you’re using Google Play Services you’re still being tracked and have closed source Google on your phone
- isykt 3y agoI don’t wish to use Windows or Linux or Android, so it looks like I’m set.
- 8zah6q7 3y agoiOS/Mac? Apple sells advertising too. They're just as evil if not more than any other megacorp.
- scarface_74 3y agoDo they track me across websites? I think the AppStore is a shit show too with or without Apple ads.
- ahahahahah 3y agoYes. They absolutely track you across websites.
- scarface_74 3y agoAnd I’m sure you have evidence of that?
- isykt 3y ago[dead]
- userbinator 3y agoOr one of the other small independents that won't work with sites that have drunk the Goog-Aid, but will be perfectly fine and even preferable on the rest of the document web, and even some of the interactive ones (old-school forums and the like.)
- justinclift 3y agoIf you're on macOS, the Kagi people have their own "Orion" browser now too: https://browser.kagi.com https://browser.kagi.com
- grugagag 3y agoThey’ve backed out of their promise to do no evil long time ago.. I have no reasons for still using chrome from time to time or at work where I prefer it over the obnoxious Edge. Firefox user at home though…
- jkaplowitz 3y agoFormally they never removed "don't be evil" from their code of conduct, although it's now part of the last sentence rather than a standalone sentence at the beginning of the preface as it used to be, and I think it's far more often disregarded by their policymaking levels of leadership than it was in their earlier years. https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/ https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/ Much of the media reporting got this wrong when Google made this change in 2018. They never promised to "do no evil", and that's become increasingly evident over time. Disclosure: I have worked for Google in the past, most recently more than 8 years ago now, but I have never been in any way part of Google's policymaking leadership ranks and am certainly not speaking for them here.
- wintermutestwin 3y ago>So tell me again why I would ever use a browser created by an adTech company? So tell me again why I would ever use a browser that lacks functional vertical tabs? Yes, some chrome-based browsers have vertical tabs (brave, others?), but no browser can compare to the functionality of Firefox with Sidebery. Too bad Mozilla doesn't care about Firefox enough to bake it in and trying to turn off the damn horizontal tabs is such a convoluted process. I'll also note that Safari's implementation of vertical tabs is hilariously bad. And to those of you who still use horizontal tabs - if you keep more than a handful of tabs open at once, you need to graduate to the clearly superior UX of vertical tabs.
- scarface_74 3y agoVertical tabs vs being tracked all over the web with the only privacy safeguard is a pinky promise? That’s not a hard tradeoff.
- smoldesu 3y ago> with the only privacy safeguard is a pinky promise? Using the internet in any modern capacity can basically be summed up with this phrase. Unless you're running a PinePhone with a browser you compiled yourself, you're throwing stones from a glass house.
- scarface_74 3y agoIs there any evidence that Apple is using your browsing history to sell ads? Are they putting their super secret ad web tracking functionality in Safari. But not putting it in WebKit?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bagacrap 3y agoIf you define adtech as anything that's paid for by ads then the entire web is adtech aside from the 1% that's subscription based.
- scarface_74 3y agoI can use Adblock to block ads on websites. When it’s built into the browser? Not so much
- bagacrap 3y agoThis article isn't about building ads into chrome or any other browser. It's about technology that's replacing third party cookies for enabling targeted advertising. IOW it won't change the effectiveness of your ad blocker.
- scarface_74 3y agoMy ad blocker also prevents tracking by blocking urls used to send information to aggregators. When the tracking is built into the browser, ad blocking can’t block it.
- activiation 3y agoBecause everyone else fell for it /s
- mydriasis 3y ago> "With Topics, your browser determines a handful of topics, like 'Fitness' or 'Travel & Transportation,' that represent your top interests for that week based on your browsing history," explained Vinay Goel, product director of Privacy Sandbox at Google, last year. No thank you.
- makestuff 3y agoIs this their plan to replace cookies with cookie-deprecation supposedly happening next year now?
- gavinhoward 3y agoThat's what the article says, so yes.
- nerdjon 3y agoThere really needs to be a serious push to remove Chrome's dominance over the internet. Google is clearly trying to shape the internet for themselves and that is way too much power. (Not that the other companies don't sometimes have ulterior motives, but the impact of those motives just happen to align with my privacy preferences)
- prox 3y agoEverytime we discuss this here, there are still a ton of ways people defend using Chrome. It’s like being sucked into the network effect and they feel powerless without using Chrome. I would like to counter that and say that diversity is better for the ecosystem than any gain you might find in using Chrome. Use Brave, Firefox… any other of the new browsers… anything really that brings more choice and less power to Google. It’s about balance. Nobody wants to go back to IE6 - part 2.
- Eisenstein 3y ago> Nobody wants to go back to IE6 - part 2. Indeed. The IE dominance and then stagnation set back web development for half a decade at least.
- userbinator 3y agoand then stagnation That's a good thing. People figured out how to do more with less, and make it compatible cross-browser too.
- wongarsu 3y agoThe IE6 era had lots of websites "designed for IE". Once IE became dominant enough, most people stopped caring about cross-browser compatibility. Which made it even harder to get out of the browser monopoly
- beej71 3y agoThis was a coding nightmare that I don't wish to re-live. IE6 was a tremendous resource sink.
- jraph 3y ago> That's the API that's supposed to allow advertisers to target netizens with adverts tailored to their individual interests without impinging on people's privacy. > And to help prevent those privacy problems, the ad giant is asking advertisers to promise they won't abuse this ad targeting mechanism. Ah, what a relief. Asking gently this to advertisers with the Do-Not-Track HTTP header has worked well, after all!
- bogwog 3y agoThey're requiring advertisers to "attest" that they won't abuse the API. Clearly they're taking privacy concerns seriously /s https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/issues/74#issuecomment-1603204126 https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/issues/74#...
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoGoogle, of all companies, should know what happens to these things at scale. Everything that can be abused will be. If your feature will be abused, is it still worth it?
- wongarsu 3y agoGoogle might be mostly thinking about how they are absolved of liability and responsibility, after all they asked everyone to super-pinky-promise not to abuse it. Anyone abusing it so did so against Google's express wish and against their promise to Google, so Google really couldn't have done anything here. /s
- simonw 3y agoAs a fan of over-ambitious taxonomies I'm fascinated by this attempt to create a taxonomy covering every possible category of targeted ad: https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/blob/main/taxonomy_v2.md https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/blob/main/...
- Pepe1vo 3y agoI'm deeply insulted that Skiing & Snowboarding got its own category, but surfing did not.
- amelius 3y ago> the API that's supposed to allow advertisers to target netizens with adverts tailored to their individual interests without impinging on people's privacy 1. malevolent advertiser creates an ad campaign for cat-food but targeted at people who are interested in bondage. 2. user who is into bondage and owns a cat sees the ad, clicks on it, orders the cat food, types their home address and personal info. Note: user is unaware of the bondage link. 3. malevolent advertiser now has another datapoint containing the bondage connection with personal info.
- jsnell 3y agoYes, if you assume the people who designed this API were idiots, and everyone who reviewed the proposals were idiots, that could be possible outcome. (Not a likely outcome, mind you, because it'd be an incredibly low-value and low-yield attack). But why just assume that, rather than read the actual proposal? In reality, the topics come from a predefined taxonomy[0] that certainly won't include topics like "bondage", nor (by policy) other kinds of sensitive PII. Additionally the system inserts noise into the system (5% of the time the topic will be a random choice rather than one of your actual inferred topics of interest), so that you can't actually infer the user's real interests from a single ad click like that. [0] https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/blob/main/taxonomy_v1.md https://github.com/patcg-individual-drafts/topics/blob/main/... [1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/topics/overview/#how-it-works https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/topics/ove...
- tikhonj 3y agoYou don't have to assume they're idiots, you just have to assume they aren't entirely serious about privacy.
- dspillett 3y ago*> by policy And we all know that policies, like end user agreements, never change. They are especially never changed unilaterally by commercial entities for which the change could be beneficial to their business plans (directly, or by virtual of a lobbying party negotiating an exchange of conveniences).
- LocalH 3y agoGoogle made one of the biggest pivots in history that the average person has no clue about. Rooted in search, pivoted to advertising, sort of like how McDonald's is one of the world's largest real estate companies due to owning the land that McDonald's restaurants are built upon.
- Eisenstein 3y agoHow is that a pivot? The only way they made money in search was by advertising.
- activiation 3y agoHow much land do they own to host their power-hungry servers?
- Eisenstein 3y agoI wonder what would happen if every single web user decided to use an ad-blocker? Would the internet just, shut down because no one could make money anymore? Or would they figure it out like the record industry did when they couldn't sell physical discs anymore? Let's find out.
- dmajor2 3y agoConstant AB testing and AI garbage is what would happen. The next frontier of advertising is GPT tailored content with ads added inline. You take the base content and run it through to subtly add a reference to the product being advertised in exactly the way that has been proven to be effective to the user. Perfect targeting.
- RGBCube 3y agoManifest V3 would happen sooner.
- NoRelToEmber 3y agoBy making web standards so complex only well-funded corporate efforts can maintain a browser, we've insured browsers represent corporate interests ahead of user interests. We must cut this Gordian knot while still can. Some combination of public funding for browser development, and making web domain names (a public good) contingent on website content following web standards, that will slowly get made simpler [1]. Perhaps the corporate browsers should be forced to display a scary red warning for incompatible websites, even if the browser is able to render them (like Google does if it whimsically decides a website is phishing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36470078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36470078). Just like we forbid radio jamming, polluting the web should be restricted, if we want to maintain some semblance of usability. As for the API itself.. it is interesting how ads based on website content aren't even considered. If something as blunt and expensive as a poster next to a highway is viable, why do we let Google lie to us that only surveillance-based advertising can fund the web? [1] Old content gets to follow the standards of when it was published.
- VWWHFSfQ 3y ago> public funding for browser development I honestly can't think of a bigger waste of public money. It will cost billions and billions, we will get nothing useful, and then it will be abandoned. > making web domain names (a public good) contingent on website content following web standards I don't know what this means. Are you suggesting that I shouldn't be allowed to register a website name unless the content is in strict compliance with someone's web standard? What happens if it's not? Do they take the domain away from me? Does the government take it?
- starttoaster 3y ago> I honestly can't think of a bigger waste of public money. Well there was the War on Drugs. But yeah I don't want a browser that was made by my government. What could possibly go wrong?
- NoRelToEmber 3y ago> I honestly can't think of a bigger waste of public money. Say that again when the address bar says "brought to you by Pepsi™", and every website you visit is sent to the manufacturer - like LG TVs sent filenames found on USBs back to LG. > It will cost billions and billions Mozilla spends $400+ million per year, and they've been at it for more than a decade. It already costs billions. > we will get nothing useful Even if the funding goes to Mozilla? Are Google's dollars magical? > Are you suggesting that I shouldn't be allowed to register a website name unless the content is in strict compliance with someone's web standard? I'm suggesting you keep the domain, but it doesn't resolve until the content is standard-compliant. Or, alternately, for-profit corporate and publicly-funded browsers are obligated to display a scary warning. > Do they take the domain away from me? Does the government take it? What do you find so hard to understand? Do you think the domain namespace shouldn't be managed like a public good? You're big on cynical criticism of my suggestions, but are my predictions wrong? How do you think the growing cost to develop a browser will be funded, if not by selling out? What do you think will happen? What has been happening so far?
- RobotToaster 3y agoSo how do I make my websites break their shiny new targeted-advertising API?
- themoonisachees 3y ago> it offers more privacy than 3rd party cookies I mean yeah probably. You know what else does that? Removing 3rd party cookies and not adding an advertisement API to replace it. Literally effortless. I believe chrome had been a good product but at this point it is clear the policy makers are no longer people who care about it as a browser (some may argue that was always the case) and are now just execs from the adsense branch.
- jsnell 3y agoThey've been forbidden by regulators in multiple major economies from removing third-party cookies without a suitable replacement.
- jeltz 3y agoWhat countries?
- dspillett 3y agoDo you have a reference for that? A quick search found nothing obvious. The option to block all 3d party cookies certainly exists (though by default only affects incognito mode).
- jsnell 3y agoUK (CMA): https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-to-keep-close-eye-on-google-as-it-secures-final-privacy-sandbox-commitments https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-to-keep-close-eye-on-... US: https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/16/22333848/google-antitrust-lawsuit-texas-complaint-chrome-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/16/22333848/google-antitrust... (States) https://www.engadget.com/google-antitrust-doj-cookies-privacy-sandbox-152453575.html https://www.engadget.com/google-antitrust-doj-cookies-privac... (DoJ) EU (EC): https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/eu-antitrust-regulators-launch-probe-into-googles-floc-plan/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/eu-antitrust-reg... Ok, technically only the UK explicitly forbid it. But having something be pre-emptively investigated for antitrust issues by both the US and EU even before launch is functionally the same thing.
- klooney 3y ago> we've added a requirement on Chrome that developers enroll to use the API and to attest that they won't abuse the API," he wrote. "That's not a technical solution, but I do believe it goes a long way to addressing this problem. Closing for now." Honestly kind of sad. The whole Google mystique is about not pretending this sort of nonsense will work.
- Havoc 3y agoI don’t see how adding an additional data point that the browser leaks (topics) is an improvement no matter how privacy conscious that is designed. Something else would need to be removed for that to be a win and realistically fingerprinting is going nowhere. So we’re moving from fingerprinting to fingerprinting plus more data.
- InsomniacL 3y agowhy put any technical measures in place if you can ask people not to exploit it and that's fine :D
- qwertox 3y agoWould be cool if the page just showed ads related to the content of the page. There's a reason I'm visiting the site.
- robin_reala 3y agoA reminder that you can stop your site from leaking visitor data by sending a specific HTTP header: https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/topics/#site-opt-out https://developer.chrome.com/docs/privacy-sandbox/topics/#si...
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]